I stopped bringing my phone with me everywhere for three weeks.
Like most people nowadays, I found myself constantly attached to my phone. I found myself frequently checking my phone for notifications, and obsessing over the number of notifications I was or wasn’t receiving. I decided to do something about it. I decided turn my life around and just stop using my phone as much as possible.
I started purposely leaving my phone at home. It began in instances when I didn’t need to have my phone with me, and escalated into a total desertion of what had once been my social clutch. Suddenly, I was overwhelmingly confronted with instances when I had used my phone to “do something.” Those spare minutes waiting for class were no longer filled with refreshing Twitter, but I was forced to look at the real world and the real people around me instead of a virtual world where people only talk about their highest highs and their lowest lows.
The first week was hard, but much easier than I had anticipated. Once I made plans with friends, I would meet up with them and would leave my phone in the car or in my room or wherever, and was forced to live in the moment with my friends instead of the virtual worlds of my digital friends. I’m a better friend to my real friends, and by some standards, worse to my digital friends because I don’t give them that “like” or “fave” within minutes of them posting. I go on social media once in the morning and once at night, and even within the first week of doing so, I never found myself craving to look more than that.
By week two, it became more of a lifestyle than a habit. My friends learned how to make plans with me (in advance or in person!!) and it hasn’t presented as much of a problem as I had originally suspected it might. Three weeks in and I might as well have downgraded to a flip phone. But my life has become so much more efficient that I’d consider doing so. No longer is social media a crutch for me to procrastinate working, exercising or sleeping. Physically, I am much healthier with the more sleep, work and exercise that I get now. Socially, I’m healthier because my real-life relationships are stronger than the ones I had obsessively maintained through my phone. If you want to talk, let’s talk in person, not over text or Snapchat. I don’t obsess about how I present myself online, because I’m more concerned about the person who I am in real life.
Social media, technology and phones were made to make our lives easier, not to become a crutch for us to live our lives on. See what happens if you “forget” your phone sometime. Will you talk to the girl next to you instead of refreshing Instagram for the upteenth time? Will you go on an adventure with friends instead of lying around obsessing about your crush’s snapchats? Will you put your phone and start living?